Professional Idiots

[pleaserecycle]

Qwark said:

Nymeria said:

Exactly, I'm much the same way.  

When labor and society became so specialized we don't need to be aware.  This can filter across though when people think their ignorance is equal to another's knowledge.  If you have a question about vaccines, talk to people in medical fields, don't discuss it with Janice at work who heard on the internet it causes autism.  This becomes a problem when other's ignorance then can adversely affect us, especially if they can infludence others.  

In a previous post I called this the Facebook gen phenomenon. In which people assume their coworker or Facebook is more reliable than an evidence based journal or article written by a professional. This one is dangerous because more and more people seem to be very much into Facebook and Twitter news which has very little credibility or they just blindly follow youtube celebrities which neatly always try to push a certain agenda. 

I think there's an underlying issue in which, as children, we're taught so many ideas without explanations.  Most of us will probably never think about the earth being round again because it doesn't directly impact our daily routine.  But we might encounter someone with an interesting question: if the earth is round, then why are railroad tracks straight?  We may not know the answer and we may not know how to find it.  At this point we don't have any explanation for why the earth is round, but we have a reason, which actually seems very intuitive, negating it.